


Midnight Hauntings

by inkfish



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7018267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkfish/pseuds/inkfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes we do terrible things to the people we love and are forced to live with the memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Hauntings

Three years in and Adam still has nightmares.

He’s still used to Cabeswater where he had the ability to control certain things especially falling into and out of it but Cabeswater is gone and Adam can’t just fall out of a nightmare. Especially not one he started having when his eyes were wide open, watching as his hands- the ones he’d caught Ronan staring at so many times, the ones he saw chap and bleed and the ones he helped heal with the lotion- Adam watched his hands tighten around Ronan’s throat and when Adam looked at him he knew Ronan had made a choice without even thinking it.

Ronan, who learned little from his father except how to curse and how to fight, how to knock a grown man to the dirt and wash blood off his broken knuckles and he did nothing. Adam watched as his hands – his damn hands- tightened around Ronan’s throat and Adam felt them around his own, dying with each of Ronan’s breathless gasps and Ronan the boy who started fires for fun and who purposely flunked out of high school and who totaled Gansey’s car stood there and let Adam rip the life from his body until someone, Adam didn’t remember who, pulled them apart.

Three summers of sleeping next to Ronan every night and many of those dark memories visited him almost every night. He slept as little as he did when he worked three jobs in high school but now even with his new undergraduate diploma framed on their bedroom wall (Ronan’s bought high school one ended up in the trash) he launches himself out of bed and into the bathroom where he curls around the toilet and vomits up dinner. Even when they were apart when Adam was in college these terrors caged him at night. He switched to a private room after first semester and paid the difference that wasn’t covered by his scholarship and both he and his roommate were not sad when he moved out.

He presses the plunger, resting his sweating forehead against the adjacent ceramic tub and hopes that Ronan didn’t hear him. He knows it’s a nearly futile thought, Ronan always hears, but maybe this time he didn’t and Adam would be able to slip back in their bed and pretend he isn’t haunted. After a few shaking moments Adam brushes his teeth and uses more mouthwash than is probably recommended but he is not getting back into the bed he and Ronan bought together after graduation with a mouth and a mind that still fear something that could have happened.

The days after it happened Ronan was careful around Adam. He wore sweatshirts with the hood up and even stole a scarf from Blue that was magenta and neon green checkers and even though his hands always strayed to any part of Adam he could comfortably reach (a leg during an afternoon drive, a hand while sitting on the couch, his hair when they walked around the Barns on a windy day) he kept his lips and his neck away from him. He talked less than normal, hiding the rasp of his voice that Adam heard when he talked to Gansey in private. Adam’s ear was against the door, desperate to know of his friends and why where they talking without him and Adam heard Gansey gasp and he knew Ronan must have showed him his neck.

Ronan acted like his style was a new fashion statement but he fell asleep on the couch when they were sprawled on it watching a movie and when Adam shifted to look back at his boyfriend he saw the still present but slowly fading marks of hands that tried to kill. Adam pushed back the hood as far as he could without waking Ronan and that was the first time he ran to the bathroom to puke. Black and purple and green and yellow, it was the same color palate as Adam’s ribs when his father had kicked him when he laid curled on the kitchen floor, the accidentally dropped and shattered glass next to his head.

Ronan waited outside for him, glass of water in hand, hood securely put back into place and when he wouldn’t meet Adam’s eyes while handing off the water Adam nearly crumpled. He had been horrible to Blue once and feared becoming his father. Now he had. Now he had bruised someone- not just someone, Ronan- and there was no becoming Adam again after that. Ronan saw his expression, saw his broken spirit and moved the water to a nearby table, turned back to Adam, and pulled him into his arms.

Adam spent years learning not to cry. To stop sniveling. To be a man. Failure to do so meant the belt but with Ronan’s arms wrapped under his, holding him up, Adam buried his face in Ronan’s covered neck and sobbed. He didn’t say anything even when Adam nearly collapsed and when the sobs reduced to hiccups, he pulled back a bit, arms still keeping the shaking boy up, and smiled at him. Not his loose smile, the one he saved for Matthew and an unexpected comeback, but a soft one, a kind one, a loving one. He moved one arm so that he could cup Adam’s face with his hand, brushing away the tears that still steadily fell and that smile made Adam feel worse. His throat was raw and his body ached and Ronan kissed him, blubbering nose and rash red face and Ronan kissed him because he loved him too. He guided them back to the couch, Adam’s head resting on his lap and Adam fell asleep there with Ronan’s hands in his hair.

When Adam opens the door, Ronan is standing there with a glass of water and a cranky raven on his shoulder. He wears just boxers (white with red lips, courtesy of Blue on Valentine’s Day) not the jeans and hoodie like Adam still remembers and when he smiles this time, it’s his loose happy one because while he knows Adam is haunted he is there to be his light. He is there to pull the happiness from the places Adam left it and return it to him, reminding him of all the good there is too. Adam drinks the water and Ronan takes his hand, leading him back to bed.

Adam falls half asleep with his head on his pillow, Ronan’s hands in his hair as he sings under his breath, a little off-key but it’s the song they keep hearing on the radio about a love that is stronger than the things that threaten us and while Ronan kept calling it cheesy and changing the station Adam would keep singing to it like it still played. He reaches out to Ronan, fingers gentle on his skin as he runs them over his neck, feeling for swelling or discoloration and Ronan catches his hand, kissing each soft knuckle between words of song and from her cage Chainsaw squacks quietly. Adam closes his eyes. He can’t return to Cabeswater any more, can’t be surrounded by moss and mist and the wind in the trees but lying in bed with a tattooed boy and his heart big enough for two is just as good. It’s better. He falls asleep to Ronan’s voice and is watched for a while, the moonlight streaming in their window and he runs his hands through Adam’s hair one more time before kissing him on the temple and settling down next to him, hands still linked and he sighs his happy smile.


End file.
